


No Offence

by GirlWithTheMousyHair



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Gen, Ties & Cravats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 17:56:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3859483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlWithTheMousyHair/pseuds/GirlWithTheMousyHair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam broadens his wardrobe, and Gene is suitably unimpressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Offence

Court Day meant Tie Day for Sam, something he didn’t particularly relish. He’d got used to his open collared shirts, and a full suit felt restrictive, somehow. Heavier than he remembered, and closer round the neck. Back home, he used to be suited and booted every day. People had bought him a lot of ties, then; he’d had a rack full of them, mainly in sombre shades of blue and grey. He was pretty sure he was no longer the kind of man who got ties for Christmas. He wasn’t sure what that said about his personality. 

Anyway, until yesterday he’d only had one tie to his name, and he’d been getting sick of looking at it. It was a good enough tie, as ties went, but he’d needed a change. If people noticed that A Division’s Detective Inspector only had one tie, they might start to wonder about him. Sam didn’t want anyone wondering. Not any more than they already did. 

He’d gone out expecting his shopping trip to take half an hour, maybe forty five minutes at most. Three hours later he’d been frazzled, ready for a drink, and still tieless. Everywhere he’d gone, there had been slight variations on the same diagonal stripes he already had, appalling paisley patterns, or colours so loud that they would put him in danger of contempt of court. He wasn’t asking for much, just something in muted tones that wasn’t stripes. Surely that could be arranged? He shouldn’t have left it till the last minute, and he shouldn’t have tried to do it on his lunch break. Not that he officially got a lunch break, of course. That made it even worse. Personal errands on the clock had always been something he looked down his nose at. How the tables had turned, and all for the want of a bloody tie...

As he’d decided to call it a day, resigned to wearing the same tie for the umpteenth time and berating himself for not thinking about this sooner, he’d passed a hitherto unnoticed shop window. And there it was. His new tie. 

It wasn’t flash. It wasn’t silk, or fastened with a golden pin. It certainly wasn’t paisley and, above all, it wasn’t striped. It was a simple, plaid tie, in greys and black, and it was perfect. 

Three minutes later, it had been in his pocket, and he’d been back en route to the station, feeling the kind of euphoria more commonly reserved for lottery wins or illicit drug use. He’d almost - almost - been looking forward to wearing it in the morning. 

***

It was Court Day. Sam arrived at the station in his suit, already starting to tug at the collar, hands constantly fidgeting with the buttons on his sleeves. Funny how you could lose the feel for a thing - back home, he was at his most comfortable in a suit. It had made him feel powerful. Now, it made him feel restless. He missed his leather jacket. 

The Guv had, predictably, not made an appearance as yet, a fact that announced itself in the absence of any fresh cigarette smoke, and the absence of any shouting. CID was sparsely populated, as it was at this hour every day, and Sam exchanged nods with the few other officers in the room. He shrugged off his suit jacket and sat down behind his desk, pulling the files for today’s case towards him. He’d left them out last night, ready to glance over if he wanted to refresh his memory or, more likely, if he had time to kill waiting for the Guv to arrive. It was a straightforward case, literally daylight robbery with four witnesses, but the con was sticking to his not guilty plea and that meant they had to jump through the hoops. He began to read over the files, making sure he was crystal clear on all the details. 

 

Gene announced his presence with his usual grace and finesse, opening the door with such unnecessary force that it rattled off the nearest filing cabinet. Sam didn’t flinch - he’d learned early on that flinching only encouraged Gene, especially when he was in one of his moods. Court Day was quite often Mood Day. 

‘Morning, Guv,’ he said, without looking up. 

‘It’ll be better once this bloody rigmarole’s over,’ Gene said. Sam chose not to point out that he hadn’t used the word ‘good’. 

‘You want to go straight there?’ he asked instead, only now looking up. Gene was standing in front of him in a neatly pressed suit and a predictably hideous paisley tie, camelhair coat slung over one arm. He was looking down at him, frowning. He didn’t answer the question. Sam raised his eyebrows. 

‘Something wrong, Guv?’ he asked, dryly. Gene gestured towards him. 

‘What’s that?’ 

‘What’s what?’ Sam asked, awkwardly tucking his chin in to look down at himself. Had he spilled his morning coffee on his suit? That was the last thing he needed. He scanned his front, and had a glance at the desk in front of him for good measure, but everything looked in order. He lifted his eyes again, ready to repeat his question, but Gene answered before he had to. 

‘That!’ he said, more loudly. Not a helpful answer, per se, and one that sent Sam looking back down at himself, this time not only tucking in his chin but also contorting his neck in a way that would definitely lead to minor injury if he tried to keep it up for long. He still couldn’t see anything.

‘What?’ he asked again, his own tone rising. ‘There’s nothing there.’ Gene must be on the wind up. 

‘Jesus Christ man, are you blind? Where’s your tie?’ 

He couldn’t have forgotten to put his tie on, not after going rushing about yesterday to get it. Still, he raised a hurried hand to his throat, to check for it. Sure enough, it was there. Of course it was there, hadn’t he just been looking at it? His brow furrowed. 

‘I’m wearing it,’ he said, approaching baffled. If this was a practical joke it wasn’t Gene’s usual style. Trying to convince a man he wasn’t wearing a tie had an air of surrealism about it; it was certainly a great deal more esoteric than the springy worm in a peanut can that the Guv had tried to get him to open last week. He’d refused it, of course, but Chris had fallen foul of it later in the day. The poor sod been so surprised by the contents that he’d jumped out of his chair, knocking it over, and when the spring rolled off his lap and onto the floor, he’d stamped it flat in a panic. That, at least, was the end of that particular joke. 

‘That,’ Gene was saying, ‘is not your tie.’ 

‘Oh,’ said Sam, realising what Gene had meant. ‘No, I got a new one.’ 

The Guv had no reply to this, continuing to look at Sam with narrowed eyes. Sam ran his hand down the length of the tie, folding the end up so he could look at it . 

‘Don’t you like it?’ he asked, looking from the tie to Gene and back again, face puzzled. 

‘No,’ said Gene. ‘I don’t.’ 

‘What’s up with it?’ Sam was starting to feel a little hurt. He thought it was a perfectly nice tie, certainly better than some of the monstrosities Gene came in wearing on a daily basis. 

Gene sniffed in response. ‘Too Scottish,’ he said, shortly. 

Sam gave a curt laugh, before realising that it wasn’t a joke. 

‘Guv, you can’t say that,’ he said, a half-smile still on his lips. The Guv couldn’t be serious, surely?

‘Why not?’ Gene countered, holding his coat out casually as he rummaged for his cigarette packet. 

‘It’s not… well, it’s… I mean...’ Sam floundered, a combination of surprise and familiar frustration making him lost for words. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being Scottish,’ he settled on, finally. How could this conversation even be happening? 

‘Course there is,’ Gene said, voice muffled round his cigarette as he lit it. He drew in hard enough to make the lit tip crackle, and exhaled a mighty plume of smoke. ‘First of all, they’re tightfisted bastards, the lot of em.’ 

Sam’s eyes widened again, this time in disbelief. He opened his mouth to ask the Guv when he’d last bought a pint, but was interrupted. 

‘Second, they all talk funny. Always banging on about some bloke called Ken.’ Sam closed his mouth again, still unsure whether this was supposed to be a joke or not. Even as he thought this, Gene continued.

‘Third, they all have intimate relations with farm animals. Fourth, the price of Scotch is too bloody high these days, and I bet they’re keeping the best stuff to themselves because they’re alcoholic bastards.’ He had begun to tick off all his bullet points on one hand, cigarette wedged firmly into the corner of his mouth and one eye screwed up against the trail of smoke rising from it.

‘Fifthly, and not finally but it’s enough to be going on with, they eat muck that a decent Englishman wouldn’t even feed to his dog. And they deep fry it to boot. It’s not healthy.’ 

Sam’s mouth was open again at the sheer scale of this hypocrisy. He made to speak, but Gene held up his hand, five fingers still outspread.

‘They’re a bunch of skirt-wearing, bagpipe-playing, sheep-bothering, shortbread tin, tartan tosspot Jocks, and for those reasons that tie is an eyesore.’ Here he removed the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled, seemingly pleased with his watertight argument.

Sam wasn’t sure where to begin. He tried to think of something that would shame Gene into taking at least some of it back.

‘My grandmother was Scottish, you know,’ he blurted, the lie finding its way out without consulting his conscious mind. ‘God rest her soul,’ he added, piously, to try and really turn ramp up the guilt factor. For an instant, as Gene took another draw, he thought that he’d scored a victory and that an apology was on the cards. Of course, he was wrong.

‘No offence,’ Gene said, with a shrug, as though he hadn’t just insulted an entire nation and disparaged Sam’s dearly departed (if fictional) grandmother. The other officers were watching, a couple wearing smirks that suggested they were enjoying the show. 

‘You can’t just clean the slate with “no offence”,’ Sam said, outraged. ‘That’s an entire country you’ve had a go at!’ 

‘Well, if any of those sweaty socks wants to come down here and take it up with me, I’ll be happy to have a frank and open discussion with them.’ He paused. ‘Your grandmother excepted, Tyler.’

Sam shook his head, almost unaware that he was doing it. 

 

‘You’re unbelievable, Guv, you know that?’ It was very much a rhetorical question, but Gene answered it regardless. 

‘You’re not the first to say so, Tyler, and you won’t be the last.’ His tone was affable, as though he’d taken Sam’s words as a compliment. ‘Now, time to get this sham of a court case over with. Sooner it’s over, the sooner it’s beer o’clock. Am I right?’ 

Sam knew he had to decide - stand up for what he thought was right, or let it go for the sake of a semi-peaceful life. 

Usually that decision didn’t have to happen until after lunch. 

He sighed. 

‘Right, Guv.’ 

Gene turned on his heel and walked back out the door, calling over his shoulder. 

‘And we’ll swing by your place on the way so you can change your tie.’ 

Sam rolled his eyes skyward, lifting his suit jacket as he followed.

‘Right, Guv.’


End file.
